Blue Smoke and Murder

by Elizabeth Lowell

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Zach said gently. “Professional jealousies are an unfortunate fact of life in the art business.”

  “So is fraud,” she said in a flat voice.

  Jill moved sharply.

  Zach’s casual stroke down her arm kept her quiet.

  “I sent that painting to the definitive Dunstan expert,” Waverly-Benet said, her body tight. “He sent me back the nastiest letter I have ever received. He called me ‘obviously incompetent’ for even considering that the painting might be a genuine Dunstan.”

  Zach whistled. “That’s harsh, even in a business noted for its prima donnas. I saw that painting. It was a superior canvas, one that no one should be insulted for appreciating.”

  Ms. Waverly-Benet relaxed, warmed by Zach’s understanding. “I thought so. Later I found out that the expert advised a prominent Western art collector not to place one of his canvases in my gallery for resale because I was an idiot.”

  Zach shook his head. “That sounds much more like a personal opinion than a professional one. In fact, it sounds legally actionable. I’m sorry you had to suffer it.”

  Jill tried not to stare at the gentle, reasonable, supportive, sympathetic alien who had taken over Zach’s body.

  “Unfortunately, this expert’s opinion is the only one that really counts,” Waverly-Benet said bitterly. “It came from Olympus, so to speak.”

  “Are we talking about Lee Dunstan, the artist’s son?” Zach asked.

  “Yes, unfortunately.”

  “It’s a shame the son isn’t an artist,” Zach said, “either by training or inclination.”

  Waverly-Benet sighed. “I agree. But Lee Dunstan controls the Dunstan droit moral, and that’s that.”

  Jill frowned. “I know that it’s common, especially in Europe, for a dead artist’s family to retain the moral right to designate that artist’s works as authentic. Without the family’s stamp of approval, a work can be deemed a fake or, worse, a fraud.”

  Waverly-Benet flinched.

  “Picasso’s heirs have made a great living from droit moral,” Zach said. “But it’s much more rare in American art.”

  “Not lately,” Waverly-Benet said, her body tight again. “The more famous the artist, the more likely you are to encounter some moral authority with the power of life and death over questioned pieces. If not a family member, then an academic or a curator or a critic who has made a lifetime study of an artist and produced that artist’s catalogue raisonné.”

  “Ah, yes,” Jill said. “Gathering piles and setting fire to them.”

  Zach fought a smile.

  Waverly-Benet didn’t have a smile to fight. Underneath the sleek exterior, she was angry and afraid. She pinned Jill with a dark glance and said, “If you’re still trying to sell the painting I sent back to Hillhouse, you should be aware that you’ll be courting serious legal problems.”

  “Modesty Breck sent the canvas out for appraisal, nothing more,” Jill said. “The word ‘sale’ was never suggested.”

  “That so-called Dunstan was appraised and found wanting,” Waverly-Benet said. “If that’s what you came to me about, you’re wasting my time and possibly harming my reputation.”

  “But you thought enough of the painting to—” Jill began.

  “Obviously I was wrong,” Waverly-Benet cut in. “I’ve had enough trouble over that canvas. I don’t want anything more to do with it. Unless you have something else to talk about, please leave.”

  Jill started to say something.

  Zach’s hand settled over her forearm. And squeezed.

  “Sorry to bother you,” he said to Waverly-Benet. “We won’t take any more of your time.”

  Jill allowed herself to be herded outside and into the SUV.

  As soon as Zach started the engine, she said, “That was one scared woman.”

  “She’s sitting on millions of dollars in inventory, her ski-resort rent would support a small third world country, and her reputation within art circles just took a hell of a hit. Damn straight she’s scared.”

  “Still, she has no right to—”

  “You should be scared, too,” Zach continued relentlessly. “It’s not your livelihood being threatened, it’s your life.”

  33

  SNOWBIRD

  SEPTEMBER 15

  11:18 A.M.

  This time I’m the hard case and you’re the sympathetic one,” Zach said as they walked up to the next gallery.

  “Does that mean the sweet thing actually gets to speak?”

  He gave her a sideways look. “Was I stepping on your lines back there?”

  “What lines?”

  “That’s why I did most of the talking,” he said blandly. “You don’t know your lines.”

  “Really? I thought you’d been taken over by an astonishingly polite alien.”

  “Get ready for the rude alien.”

  “Nothing alien about that,” she muttered under her breath.

  “Aliens have excellent hearing.”

  She shut up and stared at the door buzzer, the locked door, and the very visible guard. “Looks like a bank.”

  “Fine art is portable and pricey, a combination that crooks can’t resist. Worthington is getting ready for the Las Vegas auction. Some really high-end canvas wealth is stashed in this gallery, waiting to be escorted to Vegas.”

  “But the auction is only four days away. Why is it here?”

  “The hotel probably didn’t want the insurance risk of storing the paintings until the auction. Or the individual insurers balked. I keep telling you, art is a business.”

  As Zach hit the buzzer by the door, he noticed that there was a bright new sign painted on the glass.

  RAMSEY WORTHINGTON, FINE ARTS

  Specialist in Western Works

  “He’s really making his move up,” Zach said.

  “What?”

  “Worthington.” Zach pointed to the sign. “He’s not emphasizing Western art in his new sign.”

  “Hard to be the next Sotheby’s wearing shit-kickers and a bolo tie,” Jill said dryly.

  Smiling, Zach hit the buzzer again.

  “No one’s hurrying out to greet us because you don’t look like you fit in this place,” Jill said quietly.

  “That’s the whole point.”

  “I don’t look like I fit, either.”

  “Sure you do,” he said. “West of the Rockies, a lot of very wealthy people prefer casual chic.”

  She gave him a sidelong look. “I’ve never had my go-to-town jeans referred to as chic.”

  “It’s the whole package, not just the clothes.” Zach looked at her and hoped his tongue wasn’t hanging out. The blouse she wore wasn’t cut low or tight, but the material clung to her breasts like a shadow. She wasn’t wearing a bra.

  It had been driving him nuts.

  “You have a lot of confidence, physical and mental,” he said, forcing himself to look at the gallery rather than what was beneath the silky blouse. “Subconsciously, people—especially smart salespeople—associate your kind of assurance with wealth. You set styles, you don’t follow them. You have enough money to be a maverick, remember?”

  “Then what am I doing hanging out with a rough-looking dude like you?”

  “The usual.”

  “Which is?” she asked.

  “Down-and-dirty sex.”

  Jill was still choking on Zach’s answer when a young woman unlocked the door and smiled at them. The employee was a bright, cheerful blonde just past college age. She looked more like a marketing major than an art student. Her name tag said Christa Moore.

  The front door guard didn’t smile. He watched Zach.

  Zach approved the guard’s instincts.

  “Welcome,” Ms. Moore said warmly. “How may I assist you?”

  “You can’t, unless you’re Ramsey Worthington in drag,” Zach said.

  Even though Jill was expecting it, she was surprised at the edge in his voice.

  Ms. M
oore looked over her shoulder reflexively. A door marked private stood between a striking portrait of an Apache woman and a buffalo sculpture sniffing the breeze. The buffalo was motionless, yet explosively alive.

  “Did you have an appointment with anyone in particular or—” she began.

  “Ramsey Worthington,” Zach cut in impatiently.

  The woman blinked and automatically backed up a step or two. Jill moved into the opening, with Zach right on her heels.

  The young woman made a humming sound of distress. “Oh, dear. Mr. Worthington didn’t tell anyone that he had an appointment.”

  Zach shrugged and began glancing around at the gallery in the manner of someone who wasn’t impressed by her problems or her workplace.

  “Please tell Mr. Worthington that I want to look at what he has in the way of fine Western art,” Jill said smoothly.

  “Well, that’s just it, I’m afraid,” the woman said, turning to Jill, obviously relieved to be dealing with someone less rough-looking than Zach. “Mr. Worthington is in the midst of preparing for the auction in Las Vegas and he was very firm about not being disturbed. Why don’t I get Mr. Cahill, the manager?”

  “Why don’t you get Worthington,” Zach said without looking at the woman. “We’ve got a plane standing by to take us to Telluride. If the big man is too busy to sell us his goods, we’ll find another gallery.”

  “Um, well, yes, of course,” the woman said. “Excuse me while I conference with Mr. Worthington. It may take some time, especially if he is talking to one of his collectors about the upcoming auction.”

  “We’ll either be here when he comes out or we won’t,” Zach said. His voice said that he didn’t care much either way.

  The young woman hurried off.

  Jill glanced around, taking in the guard at a console. He was dividing his attention between Zach and the five closed-circuit TVs that displayed whatever was in view of the cameras scanning every inch of the gallery.

  Just as saleswoman opened the door marked private, Zach said in a carrying voice, “Tell him it’s the owner of the newly discovered Dunstan that was sent to him for an opinion.”

  Moore froze, then shot through the door like a housecat with a coyote on its heels.

  “At least she knew what painting you were talking about,” Jill said in a low voice.

  “Yeah.”

  Finally.

  Now all he had to do was pray that Ramsey Worthington took the bait.

  34

  SNOWBIRD

  SEPTEMBER 15

  11:22 A.M.

  At least this won’t be a total waste of time,” Zach said, glancing at his watch.

  “Why?”

  “Take a look behind you.” He gestured toward a long wall hung with the kind of Western art that gave meaning to the word fine.

  Jill turned, drew in a quick breath, and headed toward the wall without a backward look.

  Zach enjoyed the view. Eagerness and impatience with all the game playing put something special in her walk.

  Even the guard noticed.

  Zach followed her toward the wall of art. Along the way, he picked a catalogue off the top of a stack. The pages of the catalogue, like the long wall, featured art from the upcoming auction in Las Vegas. Nearly all the paintings had traditional or modern gilt frames. Many of the canvases were big enough to fill the wall above the mantel of a trophy mansion in Vail or Telluride, Aspen or Taos.

  Or a museum.

  Jill did a quick turn down the long wall, then a much slower one. Either way, the results were the same.

  “Incredible,” Jill said when Zach came to stand beside her.

  “No argument from me,” he said. “There are some truly fine paintings here.”

  “Yet…”

  Zach waited.

  “I can’t help thinking that Modesty’s paintings are strong enough to hang here and not be put in the shade,” Jill said. “Except for size. None of the paintings in the trunk are more than forty inches on a side.”

  “Dunstan didn’t do a lot of big canvases,” Zach said. “He wasn’t painting for the museum trade. He didn’t even keep a full-time studio at his home. He was truly a plein air painter. The great outdoors was his workplace.”

  She thought of the near-constant, always unpredictable wind of the Basin and Range country. “Out in the open, big canvases would be nearly impossible to paint. Especially in the wind. Like kites without tails.”

  “Most of the time, Dunstan got around on horseback or in an open wagon,” Zach said, remembering what Garland Frost had told him. “Anything much bigger than forty inches on a side was too big to drag through the wilderness.”

  “Whoever painted Modesty’s legacy didn’t need a huge canvas to evoke a huge land,” Jill said.

  “That’s part of their brilliance. Small paintings that expand your soul in a big way.”

  She glanced at him and saw that he was intent on the art in front of him. “You are the unlikeliest connoisseur of fine arts I’ve ever met.”

  “It’s the beard stubble.”

  “It’s the whole package. You look like an entirely physical man.”

  He gave her an entirely male look. “Any time you doubt it, I’ll be glad to demonstrate.”

  “I don’t think Ramsey Worthington would appreciate a live sex show,” she said. “But thanks for the thought.”

  His smile flashed and vanished like lightning against a storm. He walked slowly along the wall.

  “Any favorites?” she asked after a time.

  “Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Moran are always worth spending time with,” Zach said, pointing toward two of the biggest canvases. “Moran, especially. But I prefer his smaller canvases. Less theatrical, more real.” He shrugged. “I’m in a minority.”

  “How about Charlie Russell and Frederic Remington?” Jill asked, walking toward two paintings.

  “They’re the men who led the charge of cowboys, Indians, and wilderness sojourners into the twentieth century.” Zach looked at the two paintings. “The Russell is a fine example of the genre. The Remington has a signature.”

  She bit her lip against laughter. “Not one of his better efforts?”

  “Even the best painters turn out ordinary canvases. Fact of life. But most people care more for the signatures than the art. The prestige factor disappears if no one knows the artist’s name.”

  “You have a jaundiced view of art collectors.”

  “I was in the business for a few years,” he said.

  “I thought you were in intelligence.”

  “I was.” Still am, sometimes. Just for a different employer. One who understands that bad intel leads to really bad strategy.

  “What about the artists who aren’t household names?” she asked, gesturing at the rest of the wall of art. “Some of these paintings are very skillful, both in technique and in evocation. And some of them are barely a step above old magazine illustrations.”

  “Some of these were magazine illustrations. Don’t hold it against them. Western art is meant to be accessible. No scholarly explanations are required in order to enjoy it.”

  “My professors would call a lot of these sentimental and intellectually naive.”

  “Politics, not art,” Zach said. “Used to be that the Church commissioned and explained art. Now it’s the turn of secular priests selling modernism of some stripe to commission and explain. Same claim to moral power, different collection plate.”

  Jill watched Zach from the corner of her eye. He didn’t notice. He was looking at each canvas with the eyes of a scholar and the body of a brawler.

  If he’d been a painting, she’d have wrapped him up and taken him home.

  But he wasn’t, so she concentrated on a large canvas filled with colorful Indian braves and stalwart cavalrymen in blue coats and hats that had been tattered by weather and war.

  “My professors would scream,” she said, “but this painting really speaks to me. Guess I’m a natural-born plebe.”

&
nbsp; Zach glanced at the painting, then found its page in the catalog. Along with a brief biography of the artist, there was a price range the canvas was expected to bring.

  “You’re a plebe with great taste,” he said. “That’s a Howard Ruckelshaus. It’s expected to bring between a million and a million-two. If there are some heavyweight Ruckelshaus collectors at the auction, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the bidding blow right through a million and a half. That’s what auctions are all about—excitement and record prices.”

  Jill stared at Zach, saw that he wasn’t kidding, and went back to looking at the paintings. She spent a long time on a bigger-than-life portrait of a drenched, exhausted cowboy in a yellow slicker hauling a saddle in one hand and a bridle in the other. In the corral behind him, his weary horse had its head down, eating a freshly broken bale of hay.

  “I’ve been there,” Jill said. “So tired you see double. But the horse has to be fed, watered, and rubbed down before you crash.”

  “Code of the West?”

  “Code of the ranch. Animals first, humans second.”

  The next painting that stopped her was an epic canvas, fresh and vivid, like it had just come from the artist. The canvas showed the driving of the golden spike that symbolically joined the transcontinental railway across the United States. Well-fed Anglo men were congratulating each other on completing an important job.

  Yet the focus of the painting was not the successful men in business suits, but rather a large group of Chinese workmen who had been shunted off to one side. They were allowed to witness the event their sweat had made possible, but they weren’t included in the congratulations.

  Jill made a small sound and studied the workers. Their faces were individual, unique, subtly heroic, without the bland sameness of the businessmen. Like the cowboy’s horse, the Chinese were bone-tired; unlike the horse, no one was going to see to their needs.

  “Remarkable,” she said. “The technique and composition are classical European, yet the Chinese men remind me of nothing so much as the clay army of Xian. Individually human and universal man at the same time.”